Help Desk Branding

We had a "Team" meeting at the Help Desk yesterday. We are told this sort of monthly status report is going to become the standard but I've heard that story before. What was new is that one of the Corporate bigwigs showed up to tell us all how great The Corporation was. And the way it was spun by this Senior Client Sales Executive, we should all be doing our part to spread the Corporate Brand. Just about every other thing he said indicated that we should be salespeople in addition to the job we're actually paid to do. (And paid poorly for, I might add.)

On the positive side, as a result of submissions to our spanking new suggestion box (that replaced the old suggestion box that was ignored and forgotten years ago), Management has reinstated the incentive program (that was eliminated without comment a year ago). For outperforming everyone else for the month of January, I won a Corporate logo T-shirt. I was able to successfully resist the urge to give it away before the end of the meeting. There's no way I'm going to wear it. My "team spirit" only extends to my next paycheck.

We received a card in the mail last week concerning a third-party "Employee Opinion Survey" of The Corporation. There was some talk about the possibility that the information gathered would not actually be kept confidential and that The Corporation would use the answers to target those critical of The Corporation. In my opinion, it would be unlikely that the PR Company would risk their own reputation by divulging that information. It's much more likely that The Corporation will simply ignore, repackage or spin the information provided to them to make it seem that the employees don't hate the company as much as they actually do. In any case, what's the worst they can do to me? Getting fired could well be an improvement in my situation.

Here's a sample of some questions on the survey. Each one was answerable on a scale of one to five with the unfortunate limitation that I could not rate it lower than one nor could I add specific commentary to broaden my answer.

How satisfied are you with your position at The Corporation?

Not having my position at The Corporation would be an improvement.

I believe that I can advance my career at The Corporation.

My career was standing still years ago, and I have told you as much. The only bright point is knowing that the Site Manager believes I should be able to advance if only one of the Team Leads met with an unfortunate accident.

How committed are you to a long-term career at The Corporation?

I am red shifting even now. Given the opportunity, I would be out of there so fast there would be a thunderclap and the air rushed in to fill the empty space.

I would recommend a friend to work at The Corporation.

I wouldn't recommend and enemy to work at The Corporation.

I am kept informed about matters that affect me.

When it was decided that I was no longer going to be tre trainer, not one person in management told me that it had even happened. Even now, none of them will admit to having made the decision.

I have a good understanding of the company mission and goals.

I have a pretty good idea of the CEO's goals; make as much money as he can and to hell with The Company.

I have a good understanding of how my goals are linked to company goals.

The Corporation is prostituting my labor to the client. I am only one step above slave and if they could get away with worse, I'm sure they would try to use me even more thoroughly.

Please rate The Corporation leadership in the following areas:
Leading by example.

The CEO bought himself a jet. He spent tens of thousands of dollars on strippers in a New York nightclub. He beat up on his short-time trophy wife and then bought her off when she sued him. His salary has nearly doubled in the past year and had nearly doubled in the year before that. At corporate teleconferences when a shareholder brings up a question he doesn't like, he pretends there are technical difficulties leading him to not hear the question or disconnect from the conference altogether.

This is leadership like the Robber Barons were leaders. Except the CEO is not creating a powerful corporation like the railroads became. He is leaving a shriveled husk that, when he takes the money and runs, will be picked over by scavengers.

Motivating me to help the company succeed.
Empowering me to directly influence the quality of my work.
Providing consistent feedback and direction.
Providing appraisals/progress reports on a regular and timely basis.

And so on.

Bet, hey! I got me a T-shirt.

Scary Boy Scout

On the ride back from town on the Eliza Furnace Trail, I came across a wallet on the trail, the owner's college photo ID showing in the clear plastic window. Since I hadn't passed anyone on the way out of town I figured they were further on ahead so I put the wallet in my pocket and rode on.

It's was not long at all before I caught up with a pair of young women walking up the trail. When I stopped and asked "Is one of you Stephanie?" they looked somewhat startled. Not surprising as I was bundled up against the cold and probably looked quite menacing. The one girl had this very puzzled look on her face when I addressed her by name and actually took an intimidated step backwards.

That all changed when I handed her wallet to her, saying "Then you'll be looking for this." She gushed an excited blessing as I quickly rode off.

Scared stupid

"A quirky publicity campaign for a late-night cartoon show generated far more attention than was intended when a slew of blinking electronic signs prompted fears of terrorism and the deployment of bomb squads"

The city of Boston claims to have laid out $750,000 investigating and removing the LED ads placed on behalf of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. They arrested two individuals and plan to "take and an all legal action against Turner Broadcasting and its affiliates."

So, really, how stupid can you be. This ad campaign had been going on for the better part of a month in New York, Los Angeles and half a dozen other cities. They didn't seem to have any problems. Are you so panicky that you can't tell the difference between a cheap-as circuit board with a blinking cartoon flashing you the finger and a bomb? It takes you three-quarters of a million dollars to figure this out? Are you really that stupid?

The webcomic Otaku-no-Yen sums it up pretty well.


What I think happened is that the Boston PD was so embarrassed when they figured out that the first one was a stupid little toy that they pulled out all the stops in an act of self-flagellation to prove not only how dedicated they are to the cause but so they could rack up a huge bill and then demand reimbursement.

This is reinforced by news that on the same day in Boston, some pinhead placed replica pipe bombs at two locations, a bridge and a hospital. The culprit there has not been charged. Why? Because he doesn't have the deep pockets that Ted Turner has and making an example of a sad, stupid little man doesn't score the political points of taking on a multi-nation media giant.

Presidential criticism

[The President] should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole.

Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile.

To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public.

Theodore Roosevelt
Editorial in the Kansas City Star, May 7, 1918
http://www.theodoreroosevelt.org/life/quotes.htm

Think about the Brazillian pleasures

I really hate public transportation. And I don't think it's the fault of public transportation. I blame the Port Authority. Out of the disaster that was public transportation in Pittsburgh in the 50s, they built a system that was doomed to failure. Their "everything goes downtown" routing system was not prepared for suburban growth. They killed the trolleys. They replaced them with a subway has only two downtown stops and ignored the Downtown-Oakland-Squirrel Hill corridor that would most benefit from a light rail transit system. Fares have continued to climb while service keeps getting slashed. The drivers are some of the highest paid in the nation. Now, they are building an extension of the LRT to the North Side UNDER the river based on the dream of revitalization that the stadiums have never produced and the casinos seem unlikely to supplement while at the same time, raising fares and cutting service again.

They are disemboweling themselves and I think we should let them die. Perhaps out of those ashes, a new system will arise that will actually work.

Today's Post-Gazette had just such an idea. Robert Firth and the staff of Informing Design, Inc. produced a full page presentation on the Brazilian model of a public transportation system that would work. Instead of the "everything goes downtown" model which never worked, they propose a system with local hubs connected by express routes.

It makes perfect sense and, at the same time, will never work because the Port Authority will not die. They will continue to plod along like a bureaucratic zombie, squeezing just enough out of governmental authorities to keep doing things the way they always have. And those authorities will continue to bleed themselves upon the Port Authorities altar because they are unwilling to break the legal monopoly they granted half a century ago.

The right answer

There is a Help Desk procedure wherein new branch users who are not set up in the system have a ticket open for them. Originally, we would send these users to their Regional Managers. Then we were to tell the users to call a certain support person. When she got overwhelmed by these calls she changed her phone number in The Bank address book (really) and pleaded with us not to have users call her anymore. We were to open tickets.

So, today I got one of those calls and directed the user to her Regional Manager. The Regional Manager called the support person (who didn't want people calling her). She sent the following to the Help Desk Management:

Here we go again. What does it take? This example was definately in need of a ticket. The active directory had an error in it. Had the agent/agents (they called twice) opened a ticket . . .

And so on. Having that, D****, Team Lead and Arch Nemesis sent me the following with a CC to my Team Lead, the Site Manager and the Support Person:

Would you please explain why you're not generating a problem ticket after I've sent out multiple communications instructing everyone to generate a problem ticket for anything regarding access for a branch user?

Please reply to all with your response.

His management style again shows through. He is essentially dragging me to the front of the room so that I can be embarrassed in front of everyone. Look how stupid Geis is. See? He can't do his job right. Let me just put the dunce cap on him.

So, I sent the only response I could:

I made a mistake.

I half expected more from him but I'm sure the response deflated him somewhat. I wasn't going to fall into the trap he laid for me, as he has done before. I didn't apologize, debate, refute, rationalize or otherwise make any sort of deal about it. I goofed. Period.

Later, my Team Lead sent to me:

Good answer.

He saw what D**** was trying to do and approved of my response.

*Sigh* I guess I'll have to go to the Site Manager and say something along the links of "I know there's a lot of other people who make a lot more and bigger mistakes than I did on this one. Does D**** parade them out to embarrass them by name in front of The Bank's support people? Is this appropriate to have this dirty laundry hung out in front of the client like this? Is D**** empowered to publicly humiliate analysts like this?"

Expanded list

Add to the list of sites that The Bank has blocked:

Seti@Home
ClimatePrediction.net
Frazz
Sorcery 101

Einstein@home still works, so my computer is searching for pulsars when the screen saver is running.

Substandard Parts

After getting my cables, bottom bracket and chain replaced a week and a half ago, I found that my chain was slipping in the highest three gears. I gave it some time thinking the cables might stretch a little and settle in but it never did. Taking it back I found that the freewheel cassette was worn out.

I had bought a chain tool to measure chain wear and was changing my chain at the recommended time in an effort to extend cassette life and, at best I was able to get 2000 miles out of it.

What kind of crap are bike parts made out of these days? Twenty years ago I bought a Schwinn Sierra from a friend of mine. In 13 years of riding that machine I changed the chain every year. I think I changed the cassette once during that time. Maybe twice. That maintenance was sufficient to keep that machine running and I was putting as many miles on the bike then as I am now. With my five year old Giant Cypress, I paid five times as much as I did for the used Sierra and am changing the chain twice a year and freewheel every year, just to keep it working.

At the rate I'm spending on maintaining my bike, replacing "consumables" like the freewheel and chain, replacing cables and the bottom bracket and other things that wear out, I could buy a new bike every couple of years or so. Have bike part manufacturers given up on building quality parts for anyone other than the highest-end purchasers; those that pay thousands of dollars for their bikes? Do the more expensive bikes have lower maintenance costs? Should I just buy a $300 bike, ride it until it doesn't work anymore then just leave it in a ditch and get a new one?

The first step in making that determination is by doing the math to find out how much it actually costs me for maintenance.

Freewheel cassette, $25.00 / 2,000 miles = $0.0125 / mile
Chain, $22.00 / 1000 miles = $0.022 / mile

"Consumables", that is, those things that will wear out regularly and need replaced, total $0.0345 / mile. And at about 2,500 miles / year, that's $86.25 / year. (Or a new Giant Cypress every 3.5 years) And that's assuming I buy the tool to change the freewheel myself. I haven't been as careful keeping track of when other things went wrong and how much they cost to repair or how often tires wear out but estimates of that could bring the total up to $0.05 / mile or more.

I need to gather more information from other cyclists such as how much they are paying to maintain their expensive bikes. Only by comparing those numbers will I be able to determine if I should continue to maintain my bike, throw it away and replace it regularly with another modestly priced bike or but a higher end model.

Parking Limits

In March, H**** is going to a business related training session in Washington, DC and she has invited me along since the company is paying for the hotel room. (Or, at least, will reimburse her.) So, while she is working, I'll be riding my bicycle on bike trails around the capital. (Which is why she invited me along.)

I think that my primary objective will be the Mount Vernon Trail, a 20 mile paved trail from the Key Bridge across from Geotgetown to Washington's Mount Vernon home south of Alexandria. I've been reading up on the excellent BikeWashington.org website and noticed an interesting tidbit of information. When talking about the parking lots along the trail, he notes: "There is a 2-hour parking limit, to discourage commuter parking."

Interesting that they go to all this trouble to make a bike trail which would be perfect for people to park and then ride bicycles into an otherwise traffic-congested metropolitan area but then they create a parking time limit to keep people from using it. In fact, with the bike trail being 20 miles long, two hours isn't enough time to ride out and back. Two hours isn't enough to do any sort of sightseeing around a sight-rich environment like the nation's capitol. Do they think bicycles are ONLY for recreation and then for no more than 2 hours of exercise? It's as if they don't actually want people to use the trail.

Where I've been parking off of Second Avenue at the end of the Eliza
Furnace Trail there are several signs that states parking is "for Trail Recreational and Commuter Use." This was prompted by the neighboring lot owner (Codename P) threatening to have people towed because he didn't want people parking all day to commute and not be paying to use HIS lot. Thankfully, the city took a dim view of that behavior and, thanks to the advocacy efforts of Bike-Pgh, got the signs installed that make it clear that it is a free lot for trail users, whether they are recreating or commuting.

Granted, Pittsburgh is nowhere near as large an area as Washington, DC and so parking is less of a big deal but one would think that anything to reduce congestion, such as bike trail park-and-ride, would be encouraged. That is, unless what they REALLY want is to generate revenue by charging commuters for parking, the same attitude that lead Codename P to resort to vandalism at the Eliza Furnace lot. I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to find those attitudes in our nation's capitol. And here in Pittsburgh when the City doubled it's parking tax the local lots in some cases tripled their rates, so the revenue generating attitudes are not limited just to DC.

This is actually academic because when I go down in March, the car will be parked in a lot somewhere (at company expense) and I'll be riding my bike from the hotel to the trailhead.

Back into the fold (sort of)

A year ago when I was unceremoniously dropped from being the trainer, the person who apparently was given my job would not bring the new analysts by my cubicle to introduce them, something I had made a point of doing when I was trainer. Eventually, he no longer seemed to be doing training and one of the Team Leads had apparently taken on that responsibility. Several times I heard him going around the cubicles and introducing new employees but he rather conspicuously never dropped by my cubicle. I was persona non grata, an exile in my 48 square foot gulag.

Well now someone else seems to have been made trainer and he actually introduced me to four new analysts. I'll admit that I was a curmudgeon and introduced myself as "Geis, the disgruntled minion."

Am I now part of the team again? Probably not. More likely, the new trainer wasn't let in on the managerial secret of why I was no longer the trainer.

Yea. I'm a little bitter.

I have the power!

I took what I thought was my dead power supply to CompUSA and determined that, yes indeed, it was the power supply that had expired.

Replacement: $30.

Back home. Installed. Plugged in. Powered on and The ID10T Files is back on the air.

And while I had the machine all discombobulated, I installed a drive swap cartridge so I can take out my primary Win98 drive and exchange it for a drive onto which I will be installing the Ubuntu flavor of Linux.

Entropy

When we were installing a new entertainment system we purchased from a friend the outlet died. It didn't trip a breaker and the rest of the circuit works so somewhere behind the wall there is a dead connection. In the upstairs bathroom the light fixture died. Different circuit but the same issue. After pulling the medicine cabinet off the wall I could not understand how the pinhead who wired it ran the wires and so couldn't find the fault. Again, a broken wire somewhere behind the wall. HR has again neglected to deduct the City's Occupation Tax from my paycheck. The radiator on my car overheated because I think one of the fans isn't working. I was going to take it to the shop on Monday because of the holiday but I didn't get that day off so now I have to spend PTO to go to the shop. I spent $100 fixing my bike and the new chain is slipping. I can't seem to adjust it to work right and haven't had time to take it back to the shop. Monday I was working a holiday that everyone else had off. Tuesday was a 10 hour day to handle the extra calls that always come after a three day weekend. Yesterday I took even more calls than I did on Tuesday. Getting home and working on my computer, it suddenly shut off and was accompanied by a burning smell. After an hour and a half of dismantling things I'm hoping that it's only the power supply that I have to replace to get it working. Then, the laundry room drain is clogged. Invariably that leads to nightmares as we know the plumbing under the floor has issues that will eventually cost thousands of dollars to repair. Thousands we don't really have.

I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed as all these things pile one upon another.

A coworker has said things like, "That just proves that God has a sense of humor."

If God is getting his jollies inflicting this petty suffering upon me, then he is a demented little fuck and I'm glad I believe in his nonexistence. I much prefer living in an uncaring universe where this series of unfortunate events come together only as a coincidence. The electrical problems in the house could well be related in that the house was crappily wired years ago and the forces of entropy have finally caught up but their concurrent failure is not the result of a divine creator setting up a second-rate situation comedy.

But knowing that this is not fate or destiny or divine intervention does not make me less mopey or tired of it.

Responsiveness

Working this holiday was interminable. A few VPN calls throughout the day but otherwise slow and boring. At least I brought a book to read.

But here's some old news that I had heard rumors about at the time but only just learned the details of: the Corporate Overlords announced back in November that they are "offering more than 300 of its outsourced information technology workers raises of $1 to $3 per hour in exchange for a termination of all benefits except participation in the company's 401(k) retirement plan."

"Customers are looking for non-benefited solutions," the CFO was quoted as saying. "We're trying to be responsive."

No. Customers are looking for cheap solutions, they don't care whether benefits are involved or not, they just want it to cost less money. And the Corporate Overlords have been delivering on that by underbidding themselves. They have been providing product and services at a price below what it costs them to produce, ensuring that their balance sheets end up in the red. I imagine they believe that doing this for their current clients will allow them to land new clients but, when a new client came along, they underbid that as well. The Corporate Overlords are hemorrhaging money and expecting the employees to take up the slack. It's no wonder The Corporation's stock has lost over a third of its value.

Of course, I hadn't heard about this because I was not on the list of privileged employees to whom this offer would be made. I'm on the list of employees that haven't gotten a raise in four years and will probably never get any sort of offer that involves an increase in pay.

I have an interview on Friday and a fellow Geocacher says that his company is going to need to fill some slots because of retirements. Perhaps the tide is finally turning.

Tuning up.

Yesterday morning I dropped my bike off at Iron City Bikes to have some work done. It was due to have the chain replaced and, while I could do that myself, since I needed a broken spoke replaced and wanted to have the cable runs redone, I figured I'd let them complete the whole package. I had set up an "appointment" earlier in the week and had thought that it would be done by the end of Saturday but, with other things in their shop, they said to come back Sunday. They said they would call me when it was done.

Well, I didn't get a call. When I showed up at 3pm I learned that they had broken the front brake while trying to change the cables. I had wrecked the bike once and damaged the brake in such a way that, to change the cable, they had to break a piece of it. OK, I can understand paying the $15 to replace the brake since I had damaged it in the first place, but why didn't they call me yesterday when they figured it out so that I could authorize the work? This isn't a toy that I only use occasionally and can wait another day to have fixed, it is my primary transportation to and from work. I gave my cell phone number but they didn't even try to contact me.

well, it was an hour before closing so they could put it on the rack and do it by 4:00. In addition, the bottom bracket was worn and probably needed to be replaced. When I last had it in the shop it was showing signs of wear but replacement was something of an option at that time. I put it off then but decided to have it done now.

All told, the bill was $126.79.

View banned photographs

The Internet censors at The Bank have added flickr to their list of banned and blocked websites. While there is certainly no business reason for accessing the photo sharing website, it is just one less thing I have available to occupy my mind during the mind-numbing moments between calls.

Taxing issues

And yet again, the Corporate Overlords have screwed up and not deducted the City of Pittsburgh Emergency and Municipal Services Tax from my first paycheck of the year. I went through a long, involved circus last year when I realized that they had never in 6 years deducted this tax from my paycheck. I didn't seem to get any action on that until I ratted them out to the City Auditor. I wonder at what point ignorance and ineptitude becomes tax evasion?

Looks like I'll be calling to auditor again.

The faint breeze of change.

We had a big meeting today. Each team had their chance to go to the conference room and hear the new Service Delivery Manager give us the rundown on the changes he's going to be bringing to the Help Desk.

He talked about a new focus on communications but considering it took his being here three weeks before I even learned his name and another month on top of that before he sent out an e-mail introducing himself and his business being here I am not overwhelmed with his commitment to communication. A newsletter, bulletin board and daily stat reports from the Site Manager (now demoted to a so-called "tactical" position) is not communications.

He talked about new incentive programs, apparently to replace the incentive program we had up until last year that was secretly done away with (again, that communications thing). This will include some sort of career development. I've heard that noise before and nothing came of it. And I haven't received a raise in four years. How's that for development?

He's ordered a suggestion box that should arrive tomorrow. Oh, boy. We used to have a suggestion box. In fact, my cubicle now occupies the space where the suggestion box sat ignored. If I've got a suggestion, you'll hear about it in an e-mail.

And what did we get for all this hot air? A donut and my lunch time delayed for 2 hours while everyone else cycled into their own meeting with the new boss.

I've heard these winds of change speeches before with the arrival of each new manager. None of those introductions ever amounted to anything either as the real power isn't on site, it's held by the Corporate Overlords who are more interested in lining their own pockets. At least in the past, they had the courtesy of introducing themselves in the first few days instead of waiting a month and a half to let us know what the hell he has in mind.

The Great Communicator.

Time Over Time.

Last week, D**** was asking for volunteers to work the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday, leading me to believe that I would not be working because there was no way was going to be volunteering if I could have the day off. I have to take both my car and my bike to the appropriate shops.

Yesterday, I sent an e-mail to the Operations Manager asking for confirmation of how the schedule was going to be and how the time sheets were going to be taken care of because I well remember last year when I though the schedule was going to be a certain way only to learn at the last minute that it wasn't and I would have to work, necessitating canceling hotel reservations and missing out on time with my family.

Well, no surprise, it's happened again. I had no response all day yesterday from the Operations Manager but found a schedule in my mailbox this morning indicating that not only do I have to work on Monday but I am required to work a ten hour shift on the following day, supposedly to make up for the increased call volume that comes after three-day weekends.

The last time I worked a ten hour shift for that, I took one call with that extra morning hour. One. A complete waste of time.They didn't do this for the day after New Years, a day that we know for sure that there is going to be an increased call volume. Last Tuesday we took 150% of our typical call volume and no one worked extra hours. And they want us to work an extra two hours for MLK? Sure, were going to have a slightly higher call volume but nothing like what we had last week and nothing that warrants an extra two hours of overtime out of each of us. And then, those extra hours are typically going to come at the beginning and the end of the day when what we really need are extra bodies during the critical 8-10 slot in the morning. Of course that means solving their high turnover problem that has been hiring steadily since last year yet we still have the same number of empty seats.

The Operations Manager eventually responded to my rant and we had a little meeting. Not much satisfaction there. Lots of excuses about how busy things are and how they're doing their best, yadda, yadda, yadda. And, in spite of her words that I should be confident that the schedule won't have any surprises come President's Day, I am not convinced. I could hear it in the tone of her voice that she knew that she really lacked to authority to make any promises. I feel lied to.

Of course, I should be used to that by now.

Not so strange bedfellows

A Washington Post article over the weekend indicates that the National Rifle Association "is being pressured by its membership to distance itself from President Bush's energy policies that have opened more public land for oil and gas drilling and limited access to hunters and anglers." It seems that NRA members, who have thus far supported the Republicans lock-step, are fed up with the Bush Administration giving away public land to private interests who then close it off to hunting and fishing.

It's about time.

When was it that the Conservatives became the champions of the Second Amendment and the Liberals because anti-gun? I mean, what could be a more liberal interpretation of the Second Amendment than to say that it guarantees the rights "of the People" to access the very tools that could be used to overthrow the government. To say that the phrase "a well ordered militia" means that the Second Amendment only guarantees the rights of the National Guard to have weapons is an extremely conservative and absurd interpretation. When did the world turn upside down and black become white?

Was it because Democratic demigod John F. Kennedy was assassinated and the Democrats had to take action by passing the Gun Control Act of 1968 even though the provisions of that law would not have had any effect on Oswald's ability to do what he did, even if the rules were in effect before the assassination. Somehow, even that doesn't seem enough to redefine the words Liberal and Conservative to mean their exact opposites.

As a life member of the National Rifle Association, I believe they need to get over their steadfast support of the Republican party. The Republican's support the Second Amendment while seemingly hell-bent on subverting all the other rights and freedoms afforded by the Constitution does not help the NRA's agenda. The NRA needs to teach Democrats that the Second Amendment is another one of the liberal rights "of the People" that they should be supporting.

And as a member of the Sierra Club, I think they need to get over their preconceived notion that the NRA walks lockstep with the Republicans on all issues. Gun owners are very often hunters and they very much want to protect America's wilderness from development. If they can accept the NRA as allies on this issue, they will find their 3 million members a tremendous benefit.

Surge and accelerate.

I am regularly disappointed that I don't have the opportunity to watch Keith Olbermann on MSNBC but thankfully, Crooks and Liars.com posts his Special Comments so I can hear what I missed.

Good night, and good luck, indeed.

Open door policy.

Furthermore, If you're one of the individuals that are resetting password violations, you still need to verify the user's identity. Quite frankly, it is unknown to me how this became SOP because it's not. Originally, this was only to be done if the user was an executive because they have so many other responsibilities. It was decided that we would not put them through the hassle of trying to create/remember a new password. When you remove password violations, you're just giving the individual five more chances to guess the password.

This passage was taken from an e-mail sent out by Team Lead D**** addressing the issue that an increasing number of Help Desk Analysts are not verifying user's security information before changing password or reducing the numbers of violations on accounts.

What shocks me the most is the statement in the middle about how doing such a thing for an Executive Staff member because "they have so many other responsibilities." Are we to ignore security procedures just because it inconveniences the Big Wigs? In point of fact, it is even MORE important to verify this information for Executive Staff because these people typically have access to greater value information and thus, should the procedure be violated, the potential harm is greater. I wonder if the Information Security Department thinks that Executive Staff are somehow exempt from verification.

Secondly, it became SOP because people are not being trained to do it. When you say it to analysts once and then throw them out on the floor to change passwords, they are going to forget or take shortcuts. When I was doing training, I would take two days to work through all the password procedures and security verification was regularly mentioned throughout that process. It was also mentioned when dealing with severity level procedures as they relate to Executive Staff and also conflict resolution training as Executive Staff, or rather the assistants to Executive Staff, are those most likely to ask you to violate security procedures for their convenience.

We should never, EVER subvert security procedures for the sake of convenience. Not because they have "so many responsibilities". Not because we don't want to "put them through the hassle". Not because they are in a meeting and their assistant needs to do their job for them. Not because they whine, cry, complain or threaten. Never.

When I was training, I took security seriously. I still do. If someone has decided to exempt Executive Staff, then they are not and they should not be involved in the training process.

Carry on.

The Post-Gazette had a replay of the oddest stories of 2006:

Fort Lauderdale, Fla. Feb 13. Airport Baggage screener found a human head with teeth, hair and skin in the luggage of a woman who said she intended to ward off evil spirits with it., authorities said. Myrlene Severe, 30, a Haitian-born permanent U.S. resident, was charged with smuggling a human head into the U.S. without proper documentation.

Makes you wonder what the proper documentation would be.

Bagging the sun.

I purchased an iSun solar cell charger. About the size of a paperback book, it will power just about any small electronic device (2 watts output) or, with it's battery pack, charge 10 AA batteries. I haven't had a chance to really play with it but I wanted it so that I could be sure not to run out of power for things like my GPS or cell phone when I'm out on the trail riding my bike or hiking for days at a time away from civilization.

Solar panels can be somewhat delicate so I wanted to get a bag to carry and protect it. During lunch I went to a luggage place on Liberty Avenue because I know they have plenty of bags of all sizes. There were some things that were close but either didn't have enough for the cables and other accessories or was too large. The salesman had a few other things but eventually came up with a bag that was nearly perfect.

$125.00 !

That's insane! I'm not going protect my sensitive electronic equipment with a bag worth more than the device. I'd need to get a bag to protect the bag.

So, I went next door to the Broadway Army-Navy Store and immediately found something that was wholly adequate.

$8.99.

Resolutions

Yesterday I went out to take advantage if the unseasonably warm weather to ride one last bit of bike trail before the rain came in the afternoon. I started at Saltsburg and headed east on the West Penn Trail to scout out the new section connecting the trail through State Games Lands 328 to the Conemaugh Dam. 6 miles each way. Then I headed west as they completed building the bridge over Blacklegs Creek, opening up a whole new section of trail to Avonmore. About 5 miles each way. Then it was south along the Westmoreland Heritage Trail and back. 2.5 miles each way.

At the end of my riding, my bike's odometer read 2,494 miles for the year.

I don't feel any particular disappointment that I wasn't able to to come up with 6 more miles to roll it over to a nice round number like 2,500, but I had set a rough goal of topping 3,000 miles for the year. Not because the number itself means anything in and of itself but because it is representative of the amount of exercise and sightseeing I would like to accomplish.

I also downloaded the logs of my Geocaching and ran them through a statistical program. That revealed that I had only found 37 caches in 2006 when in previous years I had logged closer to 70. Again, this isn't a contest and I don't win by finding more caches than anyone else but the numbers show that I'm not getting out as much as I used to. I'm not riding the trails as much. I'm not hiking as much. I'm not exploring as much. And that is what it is about.

So, herein I make my New Year's Resolution (tm) to ride 3,000 miles on my bike and find at least 70 geocaches.

The 3,000 miles should be relatively easy. Since Codename P has been caught and promised to not vandalize my car anymore, I no longer have to park at the Swineborne lot it hopes of gathering more evidence against him. I can go back to parking at the top of Schenley Park. That should just about double my daily commute. That's easily an additional 1,000 miles right there.

Geocaching may be a little more of a challenge to bring those numbers back up. It will take dedicating a certain amount of time on weekends to the endeavor. Much of it can be combined with bike riding, especially on trails I haven't already ridden yet, but mostly it will require a dedication to getting out at least once a week.

And remember, the numbers aren't the goal. Getting out is the goal. The numbers are just a measure of that.

Hangman

Reports are that Saddam Hussein is due to be hung for crimes against humanity any time now. I will not be sad to see him go and, in all honesty, I don't think I would have a moral dilemma we I pulling the lever myself. Good riddance.

But that having been said, it was never our place to invade Iraq searching for mythical weapons of mass destruction, fictional al Qaeda links, contrived "war of Terror" excuses or even as revenge for an assassination plot against Dubbya's daddy. Neither any of that or the ultimate goal of having Saddam swing was worth the thousands of young American soldiers nor the tens of thousands of Iraqi deaths that have resulted.

And, in the end, even the death of a murderous tyrant will not be a silver lining in this otherwise black cloud, for his kin will only elevate him to the status of martyr and escalate the civil war further.

And Dubbya is only too happy to oblige them with a so-called "surge" of his own. Matters will only get worse. We should get out and get out fast. We should have gotten out a long time ago.

We never should have gone in in the first place.

Drive-by Performance Review

As I was originally hired in October, my annual performance appraisal should also be in October. Typically, though, management seems to forget about it until I remind them. Since my performance isn't going to be converted into any sort of bonus or salary increase, I figured I wouldn't bother. Without any incentive or penalty, the review process seems moot.

Apparently, the Corporate Overlords sent word down that requires performance reviews be done for the calendar year instead of based on employment date and also must be completed by the end of this year. So, my Team Lead called me in.

It used to be that the Site Manager, Operations Manager and Team Lead were all in on the reviews. I had been given a review sheet in advance so that I could rate my own performance and in the meeting the four of us would go item-by-item though the list, comparing my opinion of my performance to that of my Team Lead. Performance reviews would take at least half an hour and would often go longer, especially once I got rolling with my opinions about how things were going at the Help Desk. My performance appraisal of the managers, as it were.

This time, the review process has been streamlined. The meeting with only my Team Lead took only a few minutes. There was no point-by-point review, just a summary. I am apparently an "adequate" employee with some verbal communications issues. No, there's no chance of a raise in the foreseeable future.

Back to work.

cryPod echoes

Several months back, I went through a nightmare trying to get my newly purchased iPod to work with my antiquated Win98 OS.

Afterwards, I noticed problems with my system running out of resources. At first, I didn't know what was gobbling up my memory but more and more I came to suspect that the iPod "detector" running in the background had a memory leak. I tried uninstalling the software but it didn't seem to actually go away. Finally, I started up my Microhelp Uninstaller software and cleaned it out thoroughly.

Performance seems to have improved on my desktop machine and I haven't yet run out of memory resources. The Xplay software and iPod Updater is still running on my laptop (because that's the only machine I could get to actually work with the iPod) but I don't use that machine often or for long enough for the memory leak to be much of a factor.

Inquiring minds are confused

I'm a regular reader of The Inquirer as it updates what's going on out in the techie world. And while I generally appreciate the British perspective presented there, I've grown tired of their butchering of the language. This is not some po-tay-toe / po-tah-toe conflict, but a stylistic decision made my the writers at The Inquirer.

For one, they have taken to referring to Microsoft as the Vole. I'm not entirely sure why Microsoft would be made synonymous with a small rodent but I understand that it is somewhat derogatory so I can deal with it.

But the writers are going further and further afield and it is making the articles more difficult to understand.

Open source has become open sauce.

Intel is Chipzilla.

Apple has become Fruitzilla. Apple computers with Intel processors are MacInteltosh.

Firefox is referred to as Firebadger or even Fireferret. Mozilla is
Mozzarella.

And, most recently, blog and become bog and bloggers are now boggers.

An occasional usage to point out that you are heaping a certain amount of ridicule on these companies and products is appropriate. A little bit of satire never hurt anyone. But when they seem to replace the correct word with this revisioned word in the spell checker, it makes the article difficult to understand. I shouldn't have to translate the article to know who you're talking about.

If this keeps up, I may abandon The Inquisition and just stick with The Register for my IT news from across the pond.

Rebuke

Things started out quietly this Friday morning but then picked up a little. At one point, D**** sent out a message:

"Geis - we're in the middle of SWAT.......you've been on your call for 10 mins.......please wrap it up."

I've gotten into the habit of simply ignoring his talk time whining. Eight minutes later, after I had wrapped up that call and taken two more, he sent out another message:

"Geis - please disregard previous IM.....you're averaging approximately 80 calls per days.....take as long as you'd like... I apologize for the oversight but I react when I see the queue and just start sending IMs to everyone."

The interesting thing is that I am not actually averaging 80 calls a day. My average is a still impressive 60 calls or so a day but I only top 80 calls on unusual days, say when a few mail servers go down or a branch application update fails. However, on Wednesday I was talking to the site manager and mentioned that on those days that I do take 80 calls, I am still outperforming everyone. I pointed to one print out hung in my cube from Tuesday when I took 80 calls for the day and the next highest analyst took 63 calls. The average for the Help Desk that day was 37.

So, when D**** sent out that message and CC'd everyone, the Site Manager must have sent him a response referencing the 80 calls number and saying essentially, "Geis is working his ass off so chill out."

$25 buys a goat

My mailbox today contained a Christmas gift from my Father-in-law. Twenty-Five dollars in an envelope taped to a donation catalog from the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America. Thirty-some pages of ways that I can give the money I just received to ministerial causes worldwide.

He sent the same thing to his daughter and granddaughter. He knows they are Unitarians, and that's insulting enough, but does he realize that I'm an atheist? Does if have any clue how arrogant it is to send such a gift to an atheist taped to a blatant suggestion that it then be donated to evangelicals?

It's like sending a Hanukkah ham.

Person of the Year

26 Degrees of Separation

Today was the weather I hate the most for bicycle commuting; in the low 30s for the ride in, 60s for the ride home. Weather like that is a challenge to dress for as anything you wear for the ride in you have to carry for the ride back. It's much easier to plan for when the weather is uniformly cold or warm or moderate.

A Test of Citizenship

At the end of November, U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services announced a new set of questions that will be administered to immigrants hoping to become naturalized American citizens. It is apparently a lot tougher than the previous test, they claim to make better citizens but, more likely, to deter or prevent citizenship.

What I wonder about is how many natural born US Citizens and products of the American education system could pass this test? I am pleased to say that I went through it and was able to answer the vast majority of the questions correctly, missing only the more trivia related ones such as "How many amendments does the Constitution have?" In fact, I even found a few errors. (more on that later.)

Why don't you try your hand and see if you could earn your citizenship:

1. Name one important idea found in the Declaration of Independence.
2. What is the supreme law of the land?
3. What does the Constitution do?
4. What does "We the People" mean in the Constitution?
5. What do we call changes to the Constitution?
6. What is an amendment?
7. What do we call the first ten amendments to the Constitution?
8. Name one right or freedom from the First Amendment.
9. How many amendments does the Constitution have?
10. What did the Declaration of Independence do?
11. What does freedom of religion mean?
12. What type of economic system does the U.S. have?
13. What are the three branches or parts of the government?
14. Name one branch or part of the government.
15. Who is in charge of the executive branch?
16. Who makes federal laws?
17. What are the two parts of the United States Congress?
18. How many United States Senators are there?
19. We elect a U.S. Senator for how many years?
20. Name your state’s two U.S. Senators.
21. How many U.S. Senators does each state have?
22. The House of Representatives has how many voting members?
23. We elect a U.S. Representative for how many years?
24. Name your U.S. Representative.
25. Who does a U.S. Senator represent?
26. Who does a U.S. Representative represent?
27. What decides each state’s number of U.S. Representatives?
28. How is each state’s number of Representatives decided?
29. Why do we have three branches of government?
30. Name one example of checks and balances.
31. We elect a President for how many years?
32. How old must a President be?
33. The President must be born in what country?
34. Who is the President now?
35. What is the name of the President of the United States?
36. Who is the Vice President now?
37. What is the name of the Vice President of the United States?
38. If the President can no longer serve, who becomes President?
39. Who becomes President if both the President and the Vice President can no longer serve?
40. Who is the Commander-in-Chief of the military?
41. How many full terms can a President serve?
42. Who signs bills to become laws?
43. Who vetoes bills?
44. What is a veto?
45. What does the President’s Cabinet do?
46. Name two Cabinet-level positions.
47. What Cabinet-level agency advises the President on foreign policy?
48. What does the judicial branch do?
49. Who confirms Supreme Court justices?
50. Who is the Chief Justice of the United States?
51. How many justices are on the Supreme Court?
52. Who nominates justices to the Supreme Court?
53. Name one thing only the federal government can do.
54. What is one thing only a state government can do?
55. What does it mean that the U.S. Constitution is a constitution of limited powers?
56. Who is the Governor of your state?
57. What is the capital (or capital city) of your state?
58. What are the two major political parties in the U.S. today?
59. What is the highest court in the U.S.?
60. What is the majority political party in the House of Representatives now?
61. What is the political party of the majority in the Senate now?
62. What is the political party of the President now?
63. Who is the Speaker of the House of Representatives now?
64. Who is the Senate Majority Leader now?
65. In what month are elections held in the United States?
66. What is the current minimum wage in the U.S.?
67. When must all males register for the Selective Service?
68. Who is the Secretary of State now?
69. Who is the Attorney General now?
70. Is the current President in his first or second term?
71. What is self-government?
72. Who governs the people in a self-governed country?
73. What is the "rule of law"?
74. What are "inalienable rights"?
75. There are four amendments to the Constitution about who can vote. Describe one of them.
76. Name one responsibility that is only for United States citizens.
77. Name two rights that are only for United States citizens.
78. Name two rights of everyone living in the U.S.
79. What is the Pledge of Allegiance?
80. Name one promise you make when you say the Oath of Allegiance.
81. Who can vote in the U.S.?
82. Name two ways that Americans can participate in their democracy.
83. When is the last day you can send in federal income tax forms?
84. Name two of the natural, or inalienable, rights in the Declaration of Independence.
85. Who wrote the Declaration of Independence?
86. When was the Declaration of Independence adopted?
87. Name one reason why the colonists came to America?
88. What happened at the Constitutional Convention?
89. Why did the colonists fight the British?
90. When was the Constitution drafted?
91. There are 13 original states. Name three.
92. What group of people was taken to America and sold as slaves?
93. Who lived in America before the Europeans arrived?
94. Where did most of America’s colonists come from before the Revolution?
95. Why were the colonists upset with the British government?
96. Name one thing Benjamin Franklin is famous for.
97. Name one famous battle from the Revolutionary War.
98. Who is called the "Father of Our Country"?
99. Who was the first President?
100. Name one of the writers of the Federalist Papers?
101. What group of essays supported passage of the U.S. Constitution?
102. Name one of the major American Indian tribes in the United States.
103. Name one war fought by the United States in the 1800s.
104. What territory did the United States buy from France in 1803?
105. What country sold the Louisiana Territory to the United States?
106. In 1803, the United States bought a large amount of land from France. Where was that land?
107. Name one of the things that Abraham Lincoln did.
108. Name the U.S. war between the North and the South.
109. Name one problem that led to the Civil War.
110. What did the Emancipation Proclamation do?
111. What did the abolitionists try to end before the Civil War?
112. What did Susan B. Anthony do?
113. Name one war fought by the United States in the 1900s.
114. Who was President during World War I?
115. The United States fought Japan, Germany, and Italy during which war?
116. What was the main concern of the United States during the Cold War?
117. What major event happened on September 11, 2001, in the United States?
118. What international organization was established after World War II (WWII) to keep the world at peace?
119. What alliance of North America and European countries was created during the Cold War?
120. Who was President during the Great Depression and World War II?
121. Which U.S. World War II general later became President?
122. What did Martin Luther King, Jr. do?
123. Martin Luther King, Jr. had a dream for America. What was his dream?
124. What movement tried to end racial discrimination?
125. What is the longest river in the United States?
126. What ocean is on the west coast of the United States?
127. What country is on the northern border of the United States?
128. Where is the Grand Canyon?
129. Where is the Statue of Liberty?
130. What country is on the southern border of the United States?
131. Name one large mountain range in the United States.
132. What is the tallest mountain in the United States?
133. Name one U.S. territory.
134. Name the state that is in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
135. Name one state that borders Canada.
136. Name one state that borders on Mexico.
137. What is the capital of the U.S.?
138. Why does the flag have 13 stripes?
139. Why do we have 13 stripes on the flag?
140. Why does the flag have 50 stars?
141. What is the name of the National Anthem?
142. On the Fourth of July we celebrate independence from what country?
143. When do we celebrate Independence Day?
144. Name two national U.S. holidays.


You can check your answers at the USCIS Website.

You see that there are a number of redundant questions phrased differently. I can only assume that they would be mixed up so as not to be so obvious as they are here.

The answer to Questions 60 and 61 about which political party controls Congress is incorrect. While the website says it is the Democrats that control the House and the Senate, in point of fact, while the Democrats won the election, they do not actually take control of those bodies until January. But since the test isn't actually to be released into pilot cities until early 2007, by the time people start taking the test, the answer will be correct.

So, how did you do? Would you be admitted as a citizen of the United States? I wonder how well our elected representatives would do.

Government In Action. Corporate Inaction.

Back in September I began hearing rumors that The Corporation was screwing up reporting employee incomes to the Social Security Administration. There were lots of rumors about a lot of screw ups but I didn't follow up on it right away. As the reports got more prevalent, I finally contacted the SSA to get a reprint of my statement to be sure everything was OK.

It wasn't.

The Corporation had reported my income for 2004 as zero. That means that any Social Security benefits I might have earned for that period of time will also be zero.

Two weeks ago, after I received the confirmation of the screw-up, I went to the Operations Manager to have her initiate and investigation, or whatever it is that HR would call such an action. And, having zero confidence that The Corporate Overlords would actually take any sort of action, I contacted the Social Security Administration directly. Their solution was a simple as me mailing them a copy of my W-2, having then check it against a database, and amending my earnings statement.

From my phone call to them to my receipt of issue resolution took fifteen days. That includes the time the letters were in transit and the long Thanksgiving weekend. A spectacular response, given that the person I spoke to said that it could take up to 90 days.

As to my own Corporate HR. . . I'm going to let this sit to find out just how long it takes them to try to address this. I suspect that it is some large number approaching infinity. They are three months overdue for my performance appraisal. When they screwed up my occupation taxes it took the better part of a year for them to do anything and that took my pestering them and a phone call to the City tax auditor to get them moving. If I'm lucky, they'll eventually come back and say, "We couldn't find anything wrong."

"Of course," I'll say. "Based on past experience I expected you to drop the ball so I called the Feds myself and took care of it for you. They took less than two weeks to take care of it. Why did it take you as long as you did?"

OK to Drill

Even before work began on the Hot Metal Bridge project, I noticed a number of painted survey markers along the Eliza Furnace Trail. It only makes sense when you are going to build something like a bridge, you need to know where everything is. Recently, I've noticed that a few of those survey marks have a mysterious message "OK TO DRILL" painted next to them. Drill what? Why? These things are quite a way from the bridge itself, what possible reason could they have to drill there?

Well, today on the way back after work, I saw a work crew that appeared to be engaged in drilling at an OK place. Foolish me, I neglected to stop and ask what it was they were drilling for. Maybe I'll get lucky later this week and run across them again. This time I'll ask.

Geis (R)

I admit, I am a card carrying Republican. In my defense, I joined the Republican party two decades ago when the Reagan Revolution promised smaller government, a balanced budget and a strong defense against the Soviet Union. As I grew older, I realized that the things they promised were not what they delivered, as the budget spiraled higher, government got bigger and the Soviets failed to invade Europe, wasting all the money we spent on that strong defense. I grew wiser and learned that I wasn't even remotely a Republican. I like to describe myself as Politically Non-Euclidean, but as that only confused people, if I must accept a political label, I would choose a Centrist-leaning Libertarian.

And yet, I continue to carry that Republican registration card. Why should I do such a thing? Well, were I to register as a Libertarian or an Independent, I would be choosing to exclude myself from this country's institutionalized two-party primary system. So, with the third party option out, why not register as a Democrat? Surely more of the views of the Democratic Party parallel my own.

That's not so easy a thing to answer. Part if it could be keeping me in the loop so that I can see first hand all the propaganda that goes out to the party faithful. Perhaps by being a Liberal Republican I can, in some small way, pull the Republican Part back from the extreme right. Maybe, when the primary season comes along, I can vote for the most liberal Republican. Of course, in doing that I might be playing the part of the spoiler, taking a vote away from a centrist Republican, allowing the core of the Radical Right to install their blessed candidate. In the end, however, in the primaries I am always choosing the lesser of evils.

Not how our political system should work.

In the end, however, I remain a Republican (in name only) because of apathy. The label doesn't mean much to me. I don't feel a strong affinity for the Democratic Party. Why should I bother making the change? What does the country care whether I have a (D) or an (R) after my name?

Burn Rate

Typically, for me to have more than 80 calls in a day, it requires mail servers to go down or some other Bank-wide catastrophe. Then, for an hour or so, it's call after call of "Yes, we know the server is down. Yes, they're working on it. No, we don't know when it'll be back up. Have a nice day." Those short calls allow you to pack in the numbers.

But today, I had 50 calls by lunch and 80 for the day on typical calls. No servers down. No widespread outages. Just call after call. The Help Desk seems to continue to hire and bring on new people (the Operations Manager walked by just today with another interviewee), but when I look out on the floor there are the same number of empty desks as there have been for a year. They seem to be fighting an uphill battle as The Bank does more consolidation and requires the Help Desk to support more services groups and yet we can't seem to increase our staffing levels to accommodate the increasing call volume.

Why? Because they pay shit, have no opportunities for advancement or even raises and have no training for the job you're about to be thrown into. It's no wonder I'm left working my ass off. I took 80 calls for the day. Another analyst took 65, two others took 60 calls and the rest spread out from there in the 50s and 40s. I wish I could be truly apathetic and lazy. Instead, I care about the job I'm doing and actually put an effort into it. That nominal effort is able to outperform more and more analysts until it seems as if I'm carrying the whole Help Desk.

Bah!

Winter Suddenly

When I hit the trail for my commute on Friday, it was 60 degrees. This morning it was 23. With the wind chill, 10 degrees. In some ways' I've actually been looking forward to this weather. There is in spring and fall that time between when it's cool in the morning and warm for the ride home. What was worn in the morning must be somehow carried at the end of the day. And the trunk bag simply doesn't have the space. But now that winter is here, the slight difference in temperature means that I don't have to play that packing game.

The wheel turns

Brown's Law Of Tire Sizing states: If two tires are marked with sizes that are mathematically equal, but one is expressed as a decimal and the other as a fraction, these two tires will not be interchangeable.

I have to deal with this first hand as my rear tire has worn to the point of replacement. Several years ago, I had my rim break. A spoke pulled a chunk of the rim out. When I replaced the wheels, they didn't seem to be the same size. My brakes didn't bear down on the rims the way they used to because the new rims were more narrow. My existing tires didn't fit right. I had trouble replacing the tires when their time came, I suspect because of the rims that I had gotten. So, now that it was time to replace another tire, I wanted to be sure of what I was in for.

The only information I could find on my original rims was "alloy 36H", which only seems to indicate that they have 36 spoke holes. Not really relevant until I want to replace my current rims, which are Alexrims RP15F rims.

Tech Spec
Pin joint 36 holes, silver/black
Optional CSW
700C, ERD 602.9mm, ETRTO 622X16mm
26"×1.0"

The tires I currently have are Bontrager 700x38C (40-622). Notice that the rims and tires are not described in quite the same way. You'll see that both the numbers 700 and 622 appear, but neither of them actually conform to an actual measurement on the wheel. ERD (Effective rim diameter) apparently refers to the interior diameter of the rim; 202.9mm (which is actually measured correct). But then the external diameter is 636.5. So, given that the tire needs to fit under the lip of the rim, you might think that the ERTO (European Tyre and Rim Technical Organization) number of 622 would refer to the interior diameter of the wheel. However, that actually measures closer to 627mm. One would think that if you're accurately measuring millimeters, you wouldn't be off by half a centimeter.

And then there's that pesky ERTO number of 16mm. Doesn't that refer to the width? 15.7 is close enough to 16 to think they just rounded that number. Except that my tire is labeled 40-622 compared to the wheel's 622-16mm. I suppose that the 40 refers to the width of the inflated wheel, but then why is there that 38C. Why say both 38 AND 40?

In the end, I purchased a Specialized Nimbus 700x38C because it was labeled the same as my current tire. Of course, according to the tire size charts, my tire is too wide for my rims. I should be using nothing larger than a 35mm wide tire when I am actually using a 38 or 40 (depending on which number is true). Sheldon Brown's website says, "if you use a very wide tire on a narrow rim, you risk sidewall or rim failure." Well, I've been riding this combination for a few years without tragedy but eventually I'll want to replace the undersized rims with what should be on the bike so that I can restore my braking performance.

Tagging

I read an article recently about how much effort the City of Pittsburgh goes through to clean up graffiti. Apparently, however, the Eliza Furnace Trail doesn't get that sort of attention. Sure, occasionally the trucks will come through a paint over a section of concrete but they only seem to focus on the "inappropriate" things and the taggers look on the paint as a blank canvas on which to begin again.

Several years ago, I witnessed several vandals with backpacks full of spray cans having a good time on the trail. I called 911 to report them. After a while, when nothing seemed to be done by the authorities, I called them back only to be informed that they weren't coming. It turned out that Mayor Tom Murphy had recently made a public statement about believing that the abutment along the Eliza Furnace Trail was PennDOT responsibility and the City wasn't going to be taking any responsibility for it. The vandals would go out in broad daylight to paint armed with a xerox copy of the Mayor's statement essentially giving them carte blanche to do as they pleased.

With that freedom, they painted and continue to paint everything. The abutments and bridge pylons. The garbage cans. The signs. The trail surface itself. I have no doubt that once the Hot Metal Bridge opens to pedestrian and bike traffic, all the effort construction crews are engaged in now sandblasting the structure will be marred by this plague.

Quote of the Day

"My eyes are about to pop out of my skull because I'm so constipated with evil!"

From the webcomic Brat-halla .

Concrete filled hole

Last week, the construction on the Hot Metal Bridge project involved digging big holes for what I assumed to be footers for the ramps that will go at the Eliza Furnace Trail end of the bridge. Sometime today (12 weeks into the project) they poured a layer of concrete into one of the holes. They also have rebar structures to reinforce the bridge abutments or supports. It's beginning to take shape across Second Avenue as well, with some concrete walls and at least one concrete pylon. I don't know what's going on at the South Side end but one of the bridge sections is covered as they sand blast.

Introductions.

You might think it strange or even foolish to have an important service migration on the day before a holiday but apparently The Bank thinks differently. We had a queue of over 100 and wait times of 20 minutes for several hours. Anticipating the heavy call volume, Help Desk Management bought us donuts as compensation for discouraging us from taking breaks. At one point, the mystery guy who has annexed the Site Manager's office (The site manager had called him a Strategist.) came around with the donuts.

Geis: "Not to be rude, but, who are you?"

He introduced himself.

Geis: "You've been here for what, three weeks? A month? What exactly are you doing here?"

Strategist: "I was going to send out a note to people soon. I'm the Service Delivery Manager."

Geis: "And what does the Service Delivery Manager do?"

Strategist: "I'm the liasion between The Bank and The Help Desk. The Site Manager and Operations Manager report to me."

Geis: "So, we now have an additional layer of management?"

Strategist: "Yes, you could put it that way."

Geis: "Terrific."

On numerous occasions over the past year, I have explicitly stated to management that I feel that local management really has no authority or power to solve the problems at the Help Desk. So, what do they do with this knowledge? They institutionalize that powerlessness by installing an additional level of bureaucracy.

Truly, I am living in a Dilbert world.

Social Security

Few, I am sure, pay attention to the periodic letters from the Social Security Administration detailing their contributions over their careers and expected compensation once they retire. With at least a quarter century of work still ahead of me, I typically don't even open the envelopes. Imagine my surprise when I opened my lasted letter from the government to find that, according to the SSA, I earned zero income for 2004. Over 6% of each paycheck was deducted but apparently never made it to government coffers.

Investigating further, I have discovered that my Corporate Overlords are notorious for not properly reporting the monies they have withheld from employee paychecks. Others have reported several years of misreporting to the Social Security Administration. Add to that my own experience with my Corporate Overlords not paying the City of Pittsburgh Occupation Tax and a long history of SEC misfilings and other corporate malfeasance and you can easily see the pattern.

How have these guys avoided prosecution?

Four wheeled slavery

$748! That's what my car inspection cost me today. Rear brakes. Rotors. Calipers. Oh, joy. Two weeks ago I took the car for an estimate on repairing the damage cause when my daughter hit a mailbox. That was going to be $650. I asked if the passenger-side rear-view mirror was going to be necessary to pass inspection and he said "no" so I felt comfortable putting that off. Well, when the inspection actually came it turns out that it is, indeed, necessary to pass inspection. So now, for $112, I have a white rear-view mirror on my green car.

But, wait. It's not over yet. I received a letter from Honda saying there was a known issue with their emissions systems that have been causing vehicles to fail to pass inspections. Well, that's exactly what's been going on with my car, except not. I have had issues with the "Check Engine" light almost continuously since I got the car. The mechanics would find nothing wrong and reset the computer but eventually the light would come back. Unfortunately, the letter said they would only extend the warranty for those vehicles under 150,000 miles and, the day I received the letter, my car was at 151,400 miles. Besides, the error code my computer is passing out is for the transmission and wouldn't be covered by the extended warranty anyway.

And lastly, at least for this round, the computer is refusing to pass the so-called "Driveability" test. The computer won't properly reset even after driving all over creation and, thus, the car won't pass inspection, so I will need to spend even more time on top of the 7 hours I spent at the shop today. I had this problem last year as well, but the mechanics couldn't find anything wrong and wouldn't even say that it was a bad sensor or a faulty computer module. The answer that "they're sometimes like that" does not fill me with confidence.

In the 1950s, America was sold on the idea that the automobile was our ticket to freedom. With a car we could travel anywhere. We could work in the city but live in the suburbs. We could vacation across the state or across the country. Ribbons of asphalt would whisk us to our destinations giving us more free time. The automobile was part and parcel of The American Dream.

It was all a sham. The automobile is the tool of our enslavement. Not only do those highways connect us to these distant places, they also separate us from those things we need. And, without the car, we are trapped on our own suburban blocks. Without our cars we can't get to work. We can't shop for food. And when the cars break, we must do whatever it takes, bankrupting ourselves to get back on the road. We have become slaves to the automobile.

Help Desk Strategery

For over two weeks now, a mystery man has been occupying the Site Manager's office. He hasn't been introduced. No one knows what his purpose is or his name. He doesn't interact with the Help Desk except for the occasional "Good morning".

So, I finally got the chance to talk to the Site Manager:

Geis: "So, who's the guy who's annexed your office?"

He laughed, but not in a good way.

Site Mgr: "He's the Strategist."

Geis: "And what exactly does he do?"

Site Mgr: "Strategy?"

Geis: "You don't really know, do you?"

Site Mgr: "No."

Geis: "I feel for you, man. We are so doomed."

No one has seen their way clear to give the employees any clue as to what this guy's doing here. He has been here for weeks doing. . . something. Even the Site Manager doesn't really know. And when I say this Company has a chronic issue with being unable to communicate, I can now point to our Strategist to prove my point.

Turnabout

It has been suggested that I take my inability to find justice against Codename P to the press.

To what end?

This issue is about justice. And having not found justice, should I then seek revenge, for that's what going to the press would be. I would be harassing him just as he harassed me.

The courts have seen fit to take pity on a bitter, foolish old man. And while my overdeveloped sense of justice is unsatisfied by this outcome, I will be the better, more mature man by leaving it at that.

Irrelevancy

"This letter is to notify you, that for purposes of November and December 2006, commissions/bonuses will be based on a defined payment pool. As a result, your commissions/bonuses could be lower that in previous months."

How can my bonus be less than the $0 that it's been for the past four years?

It seems that The Corporation still doesn't have the revenues to support the bonuses that it actually has been paying out. They will pool up what money they do have and doll out what they think they can afford. It doesn't meant anything to me personally because I haven't gotten squat for years but it is yet another indication of how things are going for The Corporation.

Oh, and the top of the letter said "Sent Via Certified Mail" hen, in fact, it was in a regular envelope with a 39 cent First Class postage stamp.

I guess they can only afford to SAY that it's certified mail.

The scales tip.

Justitia, the goddess of justice, is the personification of the moral force that lies behind our legal system. In her right hand, She holds a double-edged sword that divides with the power of Reason in either direction simultaneously. In her left, she holds scales with which She measures the strengths of the case for and against. Her eyes are blindfolded, for justice does not see race, class, status or power.

It is a lie.

Today was the day that Codename P appeared in court to stand against the charge of harassment for vandalizing my car numerous times over the past year and a half. In that, I learned his "justification," as it were. The lot where I park was once his property. The city condemned it and then turned around and developed it as a parking lot for users of the Eliza Furnace Trail. Codename P apparently still owns the entryway and although there is a de facto easement, he believes that everyone who uses the lot is trespassing.

The evidence presented was pretty clear. The photo I took was undeniable and his lawyer offered no defense or denial except to say that he wouldn't do it again.

And with that, the charges were dropped. I must have had something of a disbelieving look on my face because the judge said to me:

"If he was a young man, I would have found him guilty and fined him."

But because he was 70 years old, she let him off with the promise that he not do it again. And, in saying what she said, the judge let me know that if it were me doing the exact same thing to his car, I would have been punished to the fullest extent of the law. I would have thought the scales would tip in the opposite direction. A 70 year old man should be wise and experienced enough to know that his actions have consequences and a young man might be forgiven for his youthful ignorance.

In this case, the Judge explicitly told me that justice is not blind, nor is it applied equally.

And so, I suppose it is over. The case is technically still open for 90 days should he break his promise but, after that, it will simply go away. As if it never happened.

The scales hang unbalanced.

Post Traumatic Stress

After running around in the woods playing paintball yesterday, the fronts of my thighs really hurt. Up and down stairs is particularly unpleasant.

It was worth it, though.

Birthday Warfare

To celebrate my nephew's birthday, we went to Riverside Renegades to play paintball. For myself, I used to play all the time but the group I played with sot of broke up and I haven't been out in years. It was fun to be back.

The Renegade's field is one of my favorites. It's a large field that allows you to run around in the woods without encountering the enemy all the time, even with large groups. It is less developed than some, with lots of narrow trails through thick brush. These features combine to allow the players to use strategy instead of just tactics.

A few of the highlights: There were 7 of us in the birthday party but a swarm of 40 from CMU was supposed to show up. They were late so the first game was just the 7 of us. Unfortunately it was then that I realized that the small 45-round hopper I had purchased for my Spyder Compact was defective and wouldn't allow the balls to drop into the gun. I set it aside to draw my backup, a classic Sheridan PGP. I was behind a fence barrier looking through a knothole in a fence barrier when one of the 'enemy' came running up to capture the seemingly undefended flag. I stood up full but could not see over the 6 foot fence so I just raised my gun over the top and took a blind shot. I quickly pumped the gun for when he would come around the fence to gun me down with his semi-auto but I had gotten him in the arm with my first shot. I'm pretty good with the pistol when I take the snap shots. Or maybe I'm just lucky.(Some of the next descriptions will reference specific bunkers of the trail. See them on the map)

When the college students finally showed up, it was pretty clear that they had no experience. I've been playing on and off for twenty years so I became the general. In one of the games, our team started up at the bottom of the hill at GI Joe's bunker and the enemy was way up at the top at Fort Apache. When the game started, most went straight up the middle so I decided to swing to the left, across the Covered Bridge and up the valley. Across from Tiani's Trench is Fort Suzuki (a insurance fraud vehicle dump that has become a permanent part of the field) and when I go there I realized it wasn't a very good spot. Three or four of my teammates had followed me and had bunched up behind a pile of branches. Above Fort Suzuki was a string of such branch/log bunkers that formed a broad front so I ran across open ground, taking fire the whole way to get there. As expected, my teemmates followed me one at a time. But instead of spreading out along this broad front, they all clustered around me. I didn't like taking all that fire and so began the push. To one of my teammates I pointed out where the enemy was hiding and told him that I was going to move forward and that he was to cover me. He seemed to do a good job and I got in without being hit. Except that three guys then followed me. So, it was the same thing. I pointed out that there was one person in Tiani's Trench, another above the bunker and probably another on the right. I ran across the bridge right up to the bunker and fired right through the "window" as the person there attempted to abandon the bunker. I drove the guy above the bunker out of hiding and eventually got him as well. Then my teammates came forward. Up the hill to Bush Garden's (which was empty) and then across towards DJ's DMZ. There were at least two in that bunker and they were throwing out heavy fire. The bunker was a three-wall structure that was a little off the ground so, if I could get up on it, I could shoot their legs. One of my teammates had run out of paint so I called on the other for covering fire and rushed the fort. I didn't see any feet so I slid like I was going into home plate and could fire up into the fort. The two were standing on the 2x4s at the corners so that their feet were up off the ground. Clever. I fired a number of shots up into the bunker and was pretty sure I got at least one of them but got myself shot in the hand. I was out but the person I had shot stayed in the bunker. I noticed a few instances of that during the day where there people would get shot but not call themselves out or would wander away with their hands up and then just go back into the game.

The next game we switched side, this time we started up at Fort Apache and attacked downhill. I sort of hung back while I waited for the battle to develop and then slowly moved down. There is a road that goes from the pond to the staging area that allow you to look down along the line of bunkers I had occupied in the previous game without being seen. A bit like Sargent York, I stayed up at the top and took out several of the enemy as they moved up this line of bunkers, paying more attention to the fire they were taking from the left. Once I saw that out team was moving steadily forward, I moved down the middle Towards the Dragon Scales bunker. It's a large 4-walled structure with windows coved by plastic pop bottle cases. This allows you to see into and out of the bunker but the grating keeps paintballs from getting through. There was at least one guy in there but he was able to hold off a number of my team. Whith them drawing his attention, I was able to flank him and get right up on the bunker, sticking my barrel through an opening and firing 1 shot from 10 feet away. Advancing on the bunker with the flag I took out one in the bunker. I moved up and got another on the left. I was able to take out one of a pair just to the right of the bunker. Now with a lot of backup I went to the flag. I was taking fire from the right of the bunker and from someone else near the Covered Bridge on the way back. I intended to throw the flag to someone else when I got hit in the back. I reach back and didn't come up with any paint so I assumed the ball hadn't broken so I picked up the flag and passed it off, turning to keep the enemy pinned down. Eventually I cot shot in the head but my job was done. That was the one game that ended in the flag being captured. I had take out at least 5 opponents.

By the time the last game of the day rolled around, I was out of paint. Actually, I had enough for my PGP so I went out on the field with that, intending to stay back at the flag. After watching the battle progress in stalemate I decided to just walk down the path with my gun at my side. I hoped that I would look like I was out and be ignored so that I could walk right through the enemy lines. It worked. I walked past a number of players without anyone shooting at me. Unfortunately, there wasn't anyone I could just turn and shoot in the back. I picked the last person in line and took a shot but my gun misfired and I missed. (The gun had been charged and ready to go in my holster for much of the game and had leaked by this point.) I took cover and was involved in a short firefight but was eventually taken out by his superior firepower.

Everyone had a good time and I was glad to be back. The CMU players had quite a number of paintballs left over and left behind so Buddy, the guy who runs Riverside, gave them to my nephew along with a box to carry them in as a birthday present.

I hope it's not years before I get out again.

Overly polite.

Kerry screwed up in allowing his speech writers to write a line that was too obtuse. I'm sure you've all hear what the press says that he said:

"Education, if you make the most of it, and you study hard and do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

But what he REALLY said was:

"Anyway, yesterday I was in the state of Texas. As you all know, President Bush used to live there. Now he lives in a state of denial. A state of deception.

I'm glad to be here with you. I really am. Thank you for the privilege of coming here. We're here to talk about education, but I want to say something before that – you know, education, if you make the most of it, and you study hard and do your homework, and you make an effort to be smart, you can do well. If you don't, you get stuck in Iraq."

I don't know about you, but when I heard this I knew he was talking about Dubbya because I heard the sentences before the one that gets all the airplay. And when the spinsters started working and released the text that Kerry was SUPPOSED to say, it was even more clear.

"Yesterday I was in President Bush’s home state of Texas. He no longer lives there. Now he lives in the state of denial.

It’s great to be here with college students. I can’t overstress the importance of a great education. Do you know where you end up if you don’t study, if you aren’t smart, if you’re intellectually lazy? You end up getting us stuck in a war in Iraq. Just ask President Bush."

But, as I said, it was too obtuse. Too clever for his own good. The speech writers were being too generous to the President and trying to make it a joke. And Kerry, trying to speak like himself instead of like his speechwriters and not being an actor, paraphrased and flubbed it. That was unfortunate to feed such easily-twisted fuel to the wingnuts. He should have kept it simple and to the point. He SHOULD have said:

"President Bush is a moron."

Thrown to the wolves

A new Helpdesk analyst has been put in the cubicle across from mine. I could hear him through the "wall" and in the time it took him to resolve a single password issue, I had taken four calls. Not surprising when you consider that he only started YESTERDAY and has had absolutely no formal training. They simply sat him with another analyst for four hours yesterday and expected him to absorb enough to start working today.

Is it any wonder that they have been hiring and hiring since the beginning of the year yet still have the same number of empty seats out on the floor. With this sort of "training", employees can't be left with a favorable impression of what's in store for them and flee at the earliest possible opportunity.

52 Week Countdown

One year from this week, November 5th 2007, is the projected completion date for the Hot Metal Bridge project. Today, they moved the fence to direct people on the Eliza Furnace trail around the heavy construction equipment. They've just started drilling holes to sink supports for the ramps on the north side of the bridge. On the other side of Second Avenue there has been quite a bit of excavation and placement or rebar. I haven't noticed enough concrete to geet a good sense of how it's all going to look.

With the end of Daylight Savings Time, it's going to be tough to get pictures of the progress as it's dark when I ride in the morning and getting darker as I'm riding back.